awakenings

I found this video today (on the girl’s myspace page – she added me as a friend – good sign, yes?) and had to share it. It seems rather cliché to say I saw the story of my life in the youtube version of a Shel Silverstein book, but I imagine that is part of the appeal– we can all recognize ourselves and our journeys in the simple line drawings and quietly powerful message.

The missing piece. That was me through my teens and twenties. Searching, seeking – always desperate to find the thing that would complete me. Not just in relationships, because that yearning didn’t go away with my marriage. Not just in my life passions, because it didn’t disappear when I discovered my birth work and photography. Not just in my need for friendships and community, for not even with the creation of those bonds did the constant feeling of seeking and searching ever totally relinquish the hold it had on me. I would often think I had found *it*, that magical piece that would quiet the yearning – and then I would get frustrated life changed (or I changed, or they changed) and things no longer fit quite right.

It’s only in the past six months, in discovering and owning MYSELF that I have found I am no longer looking for the missing piece. In finding the strength to say “This is who I am, and I’m finally willing to risk everything to live my life with authenticity.” Not by changing who I am, but by BECOMING myself.

I’m still very much in the “lift…pull…flop…” phase – but I can feel it now, that my edges are beginning to wear down. My journey is getting smoother, and I’m learning how to roll. On my own. I’m also learning that it’s okay if I want someone to roll with – a friend, a dance partner, a date, someone who might become something more at some undetermined point in the future. It’s even okay if I want to roll with a few pieces at the same time, or if I get different things from different pieces of my life. It’s okay, because this is all part of figuring out what shape I will ultimately take.

I don’t feel any longer like there is any one person or thing that will complete me – because I am learning, slowly but surely, that I complete myself. And that, my friends, feels very good indeed.

I met my husband by the pool table in our college pub in the winter of 1997. I was 21 years old and thought, however naively, that I was all grown up. It seems so crazy now, how sure I was that I knew myself and what I wanted (graduation-job-marriage-house-children-happily-ever-don’t-rock-the-boat-after, thank you very much).

I think back at that young girl and wish I could whisper in her ear,

“Go now, and live a little. Experience. Dream. Risk. Close your eyes and jump. Choose potential over safety. Choose exhilaration over comfort. Choose magic over predictability. Make millions of mistakes so that you will know how to choose what you really need. Love hard and often and without reservation. Be bold. Tell the truth about yourself no matter what the cost. Own your reality without apology. Embrace your darkness along with your light. Know yourself fully before you make promises to another.”

But that’s not what I did. I was to have gone to England after graduation to be an au pair for a classical violinist living in posh London suburb. I had also considered heading to Asia to travel and teach English for a year or two. I was going to live out a dream and explore and have amazing adventures.

Instead I met S. and fell in love, and in my fear of losing him and the future I imagined for us, I talked myself out of my plans. I got a dreary, horrid, underpaid job working for a rental car company and moved into early domesticity, sharing an apartment and a life with him from that point on. And I was happy.

But I have never truly been alone.

With this latest change in my life there exists a new space – one that has not been there for a long, long time. I went straight from the fiercely intertwined partnership of marriage into this heart-wrenching sweetness with e. I staggered both spaces for some time, slowly moving myself from one to the other – but never fully existing in the place in between.

And so now I find myself on my own for the very first time in my life. This will be the first time I am not involved in any relationship that provides me with emotional and physical intimacy, the first time I am not one half of some sort of a partnership. Even though things with e. were never all that stable or dependable – there was still the comfort of that connection to keep me from feeling alone.

And so now there is me. Just me.

Although my life is still (and will always be) hopelessly entwined with the lives of my husband and children, at the root of it all I am standing on my own. It is exhilarating. It is frightening. It is mind boggling. I feel larger than life and very, very small.

There is space – both inside me and surrounding me – that I am accustomed to having filled up by another. Space in my heart and in my mind. Space in my arms and in my hands and in my bed. But, although there is sadness and loneliness in those spaces, they do not feel empty. No, I rather think they feel full; full of reality and full of potential. Still, the first instinct with space is to fill it. To rush to distract, to replace, to find another something or someone to focus on. To seek the freefall of infatuation and to get caught up in something outside of myself.

“It is a transformative experience to simply pause instead of immediately filling up the space. By waiting, we begin to connect with fundamental restlessness and well as fundamental spaciousness”. ~ Pema Chodron.

The challenge here, I think, will be to hold that space for now. My gut tells me that it necessary to not just keep this space open, but to expand it to make it even bigger – and then to learn how to fill it with myself. When the time comes I will be able to welcome someone else into my space, and to share it with them from a place of strength and wholeness.

I came across a quote the other day, from a woman named Susannah who has chronicled her own journey of grief, loss and growth with words, photography and art on her incredible blog, Ink on My Fingers:

‘I know now that sometimes loneliness is needed, time alone to sort through the debris and have the chance to mend your sails before you set off on another voyage; time to work out your place on the earth without the need of another person to anchor you; time to meet yourself in your heart and sit with her without judgment or expectation. It’s never easy, but it is essential.”

I need to take the time to accept and sit quietly with the pain of my losses (both of the magical potential of creating something real with e. and the loss of a profound and very concrete past with S.). I need to lean into the totality of these experiences, to welcome them into myself as integral parts of my growth and learning. I need to figure out how to anchor myself to ME, instead of to another. Instinct makes us want to run from the pain, to hide from the discomfort of experiencing the negative parts of life, but that often leads to us slamming into the same life lessons over and over and over again. I’m ready to move on.

I believe we never manage to let go of painful experiences until we let ourselves experience them completely and without reservation or fear. It is not easy to sit with pain, to not only accept it, but to invite it in the aching and the tears and the regret and welcome ourselves to the experience of it in a real and multi-dimensional way. To say “this fucking sucks, but lets just see what it’s like to dive into it headfirst instead of trying to escape”

When we let the dark emotions flow, something unexpected and unpredictable often occurs. Consciously experienced, the energy of these emotions flows toward healing and harmony. I’ve found that unimpeded grief transforms itself into heightened gratitude; that consciously experiencing fear expands our ability to feel joy; and that being mindful of despair — really entering into the dark night of the soul with the light of awareness — renews and deepens our faith. ~ Miriam Greenspan

That is not to say that I intend to embrace a life of celibacy or that I would close myself to the potential of what comes my way. No, this journey is all about welcoming experience and saying yes to the universe (or to a harmless date with a cute girl). However, there is a difference between recognizing something that comes your way and actively seeking it for the wrong reasons.

And so I think of my 32 year old self, scarred and bruised and weary, but excited and strong and eager, and I think tonight as she is drifting off to dreamland I’ll try to remember to whisper in her ear…

“Go now, and live a little. Experience. Dream. Risk. Close your eyes and jump. Choose potential over safety. Choose exhilaration over comfort. Choose magic over predictability. Make millions of mistakes so that you will know how to choose what you really need. Love hard and often and without reservation. Be bold. Tell the truth about yourself no matter what the cost. Own your reality without apology. Embrace your darkness along with your light. Know yourself fully before you make promises to another.”

I hope she listens.

Tonight we worked together
He hung the blinds
while I washed the walls

Together

We talked and we joked
And enjoyed comfortable silence
And took breaks to check our email

Together

We got the room ready
Cleared the floor
Discussed furniture placement

Together

We small talked about music
And whether or not he could make it to the gym before it closed
And when I would take my shower

Together

We moved in the new mattresses
Stretched the sheets across the bed
Laid down side by side to test it for comfort

Together

We were partners tonight
Just as we have been for almost 11 years
We’ve done almost everything,

Together

But tonight
I’ll go to bed in my new bed
In my new room

Alone.

It’s Christmas Eve. We’ve just spent a rather lovely day together as a family, all things considered. Sure, there are moments of heaviness and intense discussion – there always are – but for the most part we’ve just been comfortably together today.

We debated attending church tonight for many reasons. This year marked the first year I have been able to own my lack of religion. I have tried throughout my life to make it real for me. I chased Christianity hard for a while with a yearning and craving for the sort of certainty I sensed in friends who were solid in their faith. I put on a mask and made a good game of pretend, but it was always insincere.

The affectations of this faith always felt hollow to me. Even as a child, growing up as the oldest daughter of a Protestant minister, there was always something missing – a big hole where my faith was supposed to live. That hole was always filled with nagging doubt, suspicion, and distrust. I’ve think I’ve always known that this was not my truth, but was never strong enough to admit it aloud.

The idea of attending Christmas services seemed hypocritical to me, the same way I feel rather counterfeit everytime I gloss over the answer to a religion related question from my daughter. But still, we decided to attend, believing that there was a need for some sort of tradition and predictability in the midst of the constant uncertainty of our lives. We have not successfully managed to replace Christianity with other spiritual beliefs (because I have not yet managed to fully understand or articulate my own and because S. is still fairly solid in his Christian faith), but we’ve always attended Christmas Eve services, and so we planned to attend this year as well. I thought it would be okay, but from the moment we took our seats in the pew I vacillated between sensations of suffocation and hyperventilation.

I felt like an utter and total fraud.

It wasn’t just the lack of religion. The questions about my beliefs were not at all new; I’ve attended numerous services able to simply enjoy the comfort of ritual in the absence of faith. Despite my lack of strong beliefs, I have always been able to pull a sense of serenity from the predictability and tradition of the church, from knowing what words to say, what music I would hear; there is a simple beauty of being in a place where you know all the rules (even when you don’t believe them).

No, it was more than my lack of religion.

I could imagine the picture we presented to the world. Two young parents and two adorable, if rather noisy and ragamuffin, kids. A close family bonded by love, just like any other in that church. I try to see us as we appear to the outside. I imagine what the rest of our night might look like from that outside view. If I had seen us – sitting together in that church – I would probably imagine that we’d go home and tuck our kids into bed with promises of Santa and presents. Next we’d arrange the gifts beneath the tree, and then sit in front of the twinkling lights with our arms around one another, comfortable in the certainty of our lives.

What nobody in that church could have possibly known was that we are a family on the verge of breakdown. That S. and I often alternate between clinging to our past in desperation and turning away from one another completely. That even at the best of times our interactions are bordered by the sort of tentative uncertainty that makes me forget that we’ve been best friends for over a decade. An outsider could probably sense the love between us, to me it is still such a palatable thing, a clearly visible current of emotion. Yes, the love is there, but someone looking in would probably have no idea that this love isn’t enough, not near enough, to sustain us.

At one point during the service I noticed a couple in front of us. They looked about our age, the man was rugged and handsome, the girl fresh-faced and naturally beautiful. He had his arm around her, his thumb absentmindedly stroking her shoulder or twirling her hair. She looked up at him every few moments with a loving gaze, her eyes clearly transmitting all the faith and happiness in the world. I wondered how long they had been together. One month? Ten years? Were they married? Were they happy? They were clearly in love, and that is when it struck me what truly separated us from them. While the love between S and I is undeniable, we are no longer ‘in love’ the way we have been for so very long. We are not one any more; we have begun the long and convoluted process of growing apart and moving on.

I looked over at him, and he looked so achingly handsome that it took my breath away. I wondered, as tears threatened to fill my eyes, why on earth can’t I want him the way I always did? Why can’t the love, and the memories and the life we had built be enough? Why is it that I need something different? Something more? How can someone be so close, and yet so far away?

And perhaps the biggest question of all, how do I move from feeling like a fraud, to finally feeling as if I am just being me?

I have to stand up now, unflinchingly and resolutely, and say yes, I did this thing. I cannot hide from it. I cannot deny it. I cannot escape it. Why did I do it? Why did I betray everything that was solid and real, for something that is ultimately as intangible and elusive as the wind?

“So now I will be waiting for the world to hear my song
So they can tell me I was wrong…”

You want to know the truth? You want to know the part of this where my guilt takes root and grows until it threatens to overwhelm, my truest confession…

I don’t regret it. I cannot regret it. I will not regret it. I cannot even fathom speaking of regret because it felt like everything in my life had spiraled to that exact point in time. It spiraled to a point as sharp as the blade of a sword that sliced into my skin and left the thinnest line of blood-red desire. Spiraled till the edges blurred and my head was spinning and I could see with a clarity that was so brilliant that it was blinding.

I did it because I NEEDED it. I needed it like I had never experienced need before in my life.

[And, when it all comes down to it, doesn’t that sound like the biggest crock-of-shit-justification for bad behavior that you’ve ever heard?]

I made a choice that wasn’t ever a choice at all. I was in the most egocentric, selfish, self-centered place I have ever been. I needed, I needed, I needed. And my need came at the expense of his heart. My wholeness at the expense of his brokenness, of OUR brokenness. There is no justification or excuse or explanation that could even begin to cover it, and I have to own it. I have to own it like I’ve never owned anything before in my life.

“But they weren’t there beneath your stare,
And they weren’t stripped ’till they were bare
Of any bindings from the world outside that room.
And they weren’t taken by the hand and led through fields
Of naked land where any pre-conceived ideas were blown away…
So I couldn’t say “no”.”

Truly, I couldn’t say no. If I am going to a place of deepest honesty (and that is what I promised myself I would do when I started this blog) I never really, truly considered saying no. Not once we were in that space, with nothing between us but that spinning, spiraling, all-consuming need and want.

In that moment, every should-have, could-have, would-have disappeared until there was only me… and her.

Her.

I have not written much about her, about this person that I didn’t even know a few months ago and who has now become a forever part of the narrative of my life.

HER.

Perhaps it is too immediate, too entangled, too NOW to write of at this point. Perhaps it won’t ever feel safe to share. Somehow, although I feel comfortable sharing the most intimate details of this transition here, what is between her and I (this undefined, unconfirmed, uncertain something) feels too intimate, too delicate, too fragile to release right now.

But what can I say about it without feeling I am sharing what should not be shared? What can I say that honors what this has been for me, without glossing over the less-than-pretty bits?

It is glimpses of potential and wisdom imparted and lessons learned. It is tenderness and frustration and protectiveness and expectations and growth and softness and electricity and never feeling truly on balance where she is concerned. It is build up, and it is let down. It is hope-against-hope, and the universe telling me to stay still, sit tight, remain open. It is me trying hard to listen and learn and just ride it to the end. It is intense attitude and occasionally unguarded eyes full of all the secrets in the whole wide world. It is putting up walls and tearing them down, it is softness and it is toughness, fighting not to care and diving into attachment. It is laughing and it is tears and it is struggling to understand. It is a beautiful paradox, and a painful one. It is everything standing in the way, and nothing between us at all.

The only certainty about what it is, is actually more about what it isn’t. It is not forever, or even for much longer – it was created on a foundation of understood impermanence. She leaves this place in a few short weeks, not planning to return. She has her own journey, her own places to go, her own battles to fight.

So, she will leave, and I will stay. And no matter if I one day wish I didn’t, I will always carry a part of her with me. And honestly, in spite of it all, right now that feels really, really good.

Complete Lyrics
They Weren’t There – Missy Higgins

You breathed infinity into my world
And time was lost up in a cloud and in a whirl.
We dug a hole in the cool grey earth and lay there for the night.
Then you said, “wait for me we’ll fly the wind,
We’ll grow old and you’ll be stronger without him” but oh,
Now my world is at your feet. I was lost and I was found,
But I was alive and now I’ve drowned.
So now I will be waiting for the world to hear my song
So they can tell me I was wrong…

But they weren’t there beneath your stare,
And they weren’t stripped ’till they were bare of
Any bindings from the world outside that room.
And they weren’t taken by the hand
And led through fields of naked land
Where any pre-conceived ideas were blown away…
So I couldn’t say “no”.

You sighed and I was lost in you, weeks could’ve past for all I knew.
You were there blanket of the over-world and so I couldn’t say,
I wouldn’t say “no”. But they all said, “you’re too young to even know,
Just don’t let it grow and you’ll be stronger without him”
But oh, now, my world is at your feet. I was lost and I was found,
But I was alive and now I’ve drowned.
So now I will be waiting for the world to hear my song
So they can tell me I was wrong…

But they weren’t there beneath your stare,
And they weren’t stripped ’till they were bare
Of any bindings from the world outside that room.
And they weren’t taken by the hand and led through fields
Of naked land where any pre-conceived ideas were blown away…

But they weren’t there beneath your stare,
And they weren’t stripped ’till they were bare
Of any bindings from the world outside that room.
And they weren’t taken by the hand and led through fields
Of naked land where any pre-conceived ideas were blown away…
So I couldn’t say “no”.

S. has always been a rather introverted guy. He’s relaxed and funny and has a good time in social situations, likes to hang with our friends. For the most part, however, he has been content and fulfilled with the idea that our family is his main source of community and support.

On the other hand, I have always needed a very strong social circle and a sense of outside connection, and have developed a fabulous network of support that more than meets these needs. Over the years I have often encouraged him to seek out a circle of friends because I felt that deep down he really did need it, but he really wasn’t ever all that interested (translation: he basically ignored me in an indulgent husband kinda way).

Obviously though, recent events have changed things. Now, instead of being a very tight, insular family network, more often than not we’re just two people living essentially separate lives. We come together to take care of our kids and the mundane household stuff, and to have deep, emotional discussions about our future. We are both always aware of the bond of love and time and life that stretches between us, but the comforts of the daily routine – that us-against-the-world-togetherness that is the central core of a solid relationship – these things are not so easily accessible these days.

There are brief glimpses, snippets of time where our fragmented souls come together again for an instant. It might be when our eyes connect across the breakfast table over a shared memory. Sometimes it happens when we’re in the midst of the craziest of bedtime tantrums and there is a sense of shared torture grounded in bottomless love. Other times it is a brief goodbye that turns into the most tender of hugs, the whole of our commitment to one another transmitted through touch in a briefly frozen moment in time.

In these moments I can sense us both grasping, frantic to hold on to the essence of us as long as we can. These moments are as elusive as the wind, and they slip through our fingers and leave us once again in our separate corners. I can tell, as we gaze at one another with questioning eyes, that we are both wondering the same thing; how on earth to traverse the distance between two broken hearts when you are no longer hoping to fix something, but instead yearning to create something new.

Because of my social network, and my extroverted nature and the fact that I am the one pushing this journey along, I have had places to go and people to help ease this transition. When I didn’t already have people in my life to fill the roles that needed to be filled, I managed to fill them through personal effort, blind luck and sweet serendipity. He, on the other hand, basically had nobody – and we all know that isolation makes a bad situation seem so much worse. These past four months have been a long, lonely, painful road for him. In recent weeks he has been taking those first steps to reach for connection. He’s joined some online meetup groups, and has been attending social get-togethers, regular weekly hikes, etc.

I’ve been really happy for him, although sad at the same time to see further evidence of our separation and division – another sign that we are growing apart, and not together. But I know that that he needs this, badly needs to find a network of support and people he can interact with and have fun with to distract him from the difficult realities of our situation.

This weekend he went out on a hike with a woman named K. A hike that stretched into a seven hour date. They’ve been exchanging emails seemingly non-stop since some time last week, and they are going out for coffee and dinner again tonight. He showed me her picture, and she’s pretty dang cute! It’s just friendship at this point, he says, but I know him (better than anyone on this planet, as a matter of fact) and I can tell he is interested, but unsure of himself.

What an odd, almost inexplicable place for us to be in. Obviously, if he finds someone he cares about it will make my life easier on many levels. We’ve been stagnating in a not so healthy place, and this would help things move on. Aside from that, I care about him so much, and I want him to be happy, and, let’s be totally honest, quite frankly it would ease my guilt a little.

But still, it feels a little lot weird. With this new development there is both a new level of ease and an uncomfortable level of strangeness between us. I wrote last week about how impossible it seemed to imagine myself with some nameless, faceless ‘her’ in the future – and it seems just as impossible to imagine HIM with some nameless and faceless ‘her’. When I let myself think of it, I am suffused with the most bittersweet ache.

Why, oh why, I want to ask the universe, do I have to loose this man in order to find myself? This sweet, soulful, tender, dedicated, doting husband who has cared for me with every bit of himself for a third of our time on this earth. This man who has taken pleasure in being provider and pillar of strength and who is never happier than when spoiling his wife and daughters with love and affection. This man who was to be my companion and guardian through the years as we grew old together. Why does stepping into myself have to mean stepping away from him?

Truly, I don’t really expect to ever find again the kind of partnership we shared. That’s not pessimism speaking, but rather what feels like truth in my heart, I don’t know that anyone gets to be that lucky twice. And that is what finally told me that this is real for me – that even knowing what I will lose, I must risk it all to be true to myself. I have to risk it, because I cannot bear to live as only half of myself any longer. All this is true, but still, I had no idea how much strength it would take for me to set him free.

And that is the crux of it right there. I could stay here, in a space of the utmost comfort and love, in an environment of caring and commitment, and I could slowly but surely suffocate from the efforts of denying myself. It hurts so much to do this, to walk away from a beautiful reality and an even more impossibly beautiful dream. Yes, it hurts beyond hurt. But this – this path, this truth, this journey – this is where I finally begin to breathe deep. This is where I begin to know myself. This is where I begin to blossom into the person I have always been, but have never given myself a chance to become.

In my most tender and hopeful daydreams, we are able to make this transition with love and grace. We somehow find the strength to love each other through this, not out of obligation or guilt – but precisely because we were blessed beyond measure to find each other, and to spend the last 11 years together. I picture a future that includes love for both of us AND between us – some sort of divorce-utopia (think those paparazzi pics of Bruce Willis, Demi Moore and their kids and significant others all watching some random parade and totally cool together). Can this be our reality?

To sit here writing this now – while my husband is across town in some restaurant, sitting across a table from some cute blonde almost-stranger, engaged in conversation and probably feeling that little electric pulse that defines the beginning of anything unknown – this is a reality I never imagined for myself. This reality slips from bizarre to liberating to heartbreaking to frightening to a place of hopeful peace and then back again in one fluid instant that stretches ahead of me into an unknown future.

I just paused my writing to go chat on the phone with a new, but already dear, friend. We were talking about her new relationship, and about the process of not being attached to outcome.

It is unrealistic, I argued, to think that we can totally give up that attachment. It’s in our nature to want to manipulate our circumstances, to want what we want and to attempt to get it. But then I sit here and contemplate my own argument and wonder about its validity. For what else is there to do here and now but release the outcome of this to the universe and accept that what will be, will be. To come fact to face with the fact that I am ultimately powerless, that the energy of our relationship has it’s own emotional force, it’s own karma – and that this is something I cannot even begin to understand, let alone control.

It is true, I believe, that all of these emotions – the hope, the sense of loss, the desire to dwell in the past, the fear that I will never again have what I once held so dear, the need to hold on to what was – these are all attempts to control, they are all evidence that I am very invested in the outcome of this situation. I’m not sure how to move beyond that, and I’m not even sure that now is the time to try.

For now, it will have to be enough to recognize my emotions for what they are, and also to realize that I have to work on relinquishing our relationship to the universe. I need to stop holding on so tightly, to non-judgmentally recognize my need to control, and to start letting go.

I need to set it free, for if I don’t it will never have the freedom to find it’s new form. I sense that this is necessary, that our relationship (as if it were it’s own physical entity) needs to stretch and grow and curl itself into a ball to cry for hours, and dance and meditate and daydream and work on knowing it’s center and it’s edges – just as much as S. and I need do this as individuals.

In the end, it all comes back to trust. Can I trust enough to do this?

I think I can.

Yes, I think we can.

"Lying is done with words and also with silence"
~Adrienne Rich

The trouble with a lie is not always just the lie itself; it is the immensity of the truth that lives behind the lie.  That truth is bigger than the lie, it always is.  Once you have done this thing – created this lie – you can’t ever forget that truth is lurking there.  It’s just over your shoulder, it whispers in your ear so you don’t forget.   In this way, your lie becomes a living, breathing entity that takes up far more space than you thought possible in the moment of its creation.

I think perhaps that a lie can have a more insidious effect on karma than almost anything else.  The universe knows the truth, and nothing can truly be in balance as long as the lie is an actively functioning part of your life.

I got caught in a lie last night – the secret I most wanted to keep was discovered.  My most shameful, destructive, desperate actions set free to rebalance that universal energy.  His heart broken again, worse than ever.  His pain is mine to own.  His betrayal is my responsibility.   I have no excuse for myself, nothing to say but ‘sorry’ over and over again (has any word ever seemed so inadequate and meaningless, I wonder?).

I can tell him that I was caught up in something bigger than myself.  That over 14 years of denial cumulated into a force that was so utterly inevitable that I couldn’t find the strength to resist it.  That I didn’t want to resist it, not even for him, not even for our marriage.  That once I acknowledged this, I was like a snowball rolling down a hill, picking up mass and velocity with every spin (and oh, how I felt I was spinning so fast I would surely disintegrate if it got any more intense).  That I knew in the deepest part of myself that I would not stop until I had done this. 

I could tell him that I wanted to seize this experience for myself so badly that I had blinders on.  That I couldn’t see past my own needs, that I couldn’t hear past the chaos in my head, couldn’t feel anything beyond the fire that consumed my body.  That I needed to lay claim to this part of myself in order to know if I could ever truly be whole.  That every day of NOT doing this felt like a betrayal of myself, and that I couldn’t bear it any longer. 

I could tell him that even knowing everything I know; I would probably do it again.   Not because I am a heartless, selfish bitch (although I might certainly be that sometimes) but because this need (not just the physical need, although that was certainly not insignificant) was stronger than anything I had ever experienced.  So strong, in fact, that I would likely have completely destroyed myself in order to satisfy it.  I could tell him that if it hadn’t been then, it would have been soon after.  If it hadn’t been her, it would have been someone else.  If it hadn’t been here, it would have been somewhere.

But in the end, what are all those words if not ultimately meaningless excuses for doing something I knew to be terribly wrong?

Since the beginning I have been living in this place somewhere between the heaviest guilt and shame and the exhilaration of finally living authentically.  Right now, all I can feel is the guilt.  All I have room for inside myself is the shame of what I have done.   Not the shame of being true to myself.  Certainly not shame for being with a woman, for I could never feel shame for something that was obviously so right.

But, I could have chosen to do this in a way that respected him, in a way that respected us.  I didn’t choose that.  I took another road – a selfish, self-serving road – and now we both have to live with that knowledge.  Not just the knowledge of what I did, and how I did it, but the knowledge that I was too weak to tell him the truth.  I didn’t tell him then, and I didn’t tell him in the millions of moments between then and now.

I didn’t do it because I was not strong enough.  I didn’t do it because I somehow convinced myself that this lie was kinder than the truth.  I didn’t do it because I was trying to rationalize my selfish desire to not share something so incredibly intimate.  I didn’t do it because I could not bear to see the look in his eyes when he realized I was not the person he thought that I was.  I didn’t do it because I couldn’t bear to own the fact that I was that person.

In the end all that matter is this: I didn’t do it.  I chose the lie over the truth – and I got caught.

And in getting caught I feel countless emotions – guilt and shame intensified beyond their already almost unbearable level.  Loneliness and emptiness and that damn numbness once again taking over my body and mind.  Most of all though, I feel relief.   It’s done now.  I feel myself slowly gaining equilibrium, even though I didn’t even understand why it had been missing all this time.  I feel some karmic restoration that I don’t think I can fully accept because I feel so unworthy of it right now.

I have no idea where we go from here.  Before this, it felt like we were finally getting somewhere, making progress, learning how to move on.  Now, because of my choices, everything has crashed down again.  And through it all, he is still this man who never ceases to amaze.  That email I shared a few days ago was written AFTER he learned the truth – and he still means it.  He still loves me, he still worries about me, he still offers me love and comfort and support.  I have never felt so utterly undeserving of anything in my life.

This truth had to be released.  I know that now in a way I could not have known it yesterday.  As long as I carried the weight of that lie, I could not step forward.   Owning that lie kept me in a place of self-loathing, and kept us in a place of distrust and suspicion.  Now it has been set free.  Now I can own the truth instead of the lie – and I can move on into this great unknown future.  Afraid still, but perhaps with my head held a little higher.

I wonder sometimes – how do I keep myself open enough to learn all the lessons this is teaching me?  How do I integrate and accept all that has been given, and how to I release and let go of all that can no longer be?  How do I balance the need to be both kind and honest in the same moment?  How do I both accept responsibility for my actions and  absolution from the weight of guilt for things beyond my control?  How do I integrate two fractured parts of myself into one person who is whole and complete?

I guess the only answer is to be found in living the truth.

"An authentic life is the most personal form of worship. Everyday life has become my prayer"
~Sarah Ban Breathnach

I was sitting at my kitchen table, eating some excellent vegetarian chili and reading “Eat, Pray, Love”*.  The author was recounting a period of time at an Ashram in India where she is speaking with her friends about her guilt over her divorce and her inability to let go.  That night one of her friends takes her to the top of a tower, the tallest place in the Ashram – with a view that overlooks the entire valley below – and leaves her there with a list of instructions:

INSTRUCTIONS FOR FREEDOM
1.  Life’s metaphors are God’s instructions.

2. You have just climbed up and above the roof.  There is nothing between you and the Infinite.  Now, let go.

3. The day is ending.  It’s time for something that was beautiful to turn into something else that is beautiful.  Now, let go.

4.  Your wish for resolution was a prayer.  Your being here is God’s response.  Let go, and watch the stars come out – on the outside and on the inside.

5. With all your heart, ask for grace, and let go.

6. With all your heart, forgive him.  FORGIVE YOURSELF, and let him go.

7. Let your intention be freedom from useless suffering.  Then, let go.

8. Watch the heat of day pass into the cool night.  Let go.

9. When the karma of a relationship is done, only love remains.  It’s safe.  Let go.

10. When the past has passed from you at last, let go.  Then climb down and begin the rest of your life.  With great joy.

I got to the end of number three before the tears were flowing and I had to put down the book.  I didn’t cry much, I never do -probably less than a minute total – but I did cry, which is progress.  I am so shut down right now that I am yearning for the release that tears would give me, but somehow I cannot give myself over to them just yet.  Perhaps because there is nowhere I truly feel safe right now.  Nobody I really feel safe with.  I wish I had someone that could be that for me, where I could feel totally safe wrapping myself up in their arms and letting it all go.   I wish there was because I feel the cloud that is hovering over me growing larger, and I feel myself being sucked into the same darkness that consumed me last winter.  I don’t want to go there again.

Although I removed my rings this week, I am still clinging to the past.  I knew this as soon as I read that line;

 “It’s time for something that was beautiful to turn into something else that is beautiful”

I’m not really ready to let go yet, but I need to.  I am deeply afraid to let go, but I have to.  I don’t want to let go, but I must.  I understand now that this darkness I feel is the cloud of mourning.  I am mourning the loss of my marriage.  The loss of what I thought would be my life.  The loss of a partnership that has sustained me for over a decade.  I am mourning the loss an incredible man who I was sure would walk by my side until the day one of us died.  What if I don’t want it to turn into something else that is beautiful?  What if I am afraid to really know what that would be?

S. wrote me an amazing email this week and closed it with this:

“I miss my wife, her heart, emotions, closeness and affections.  No matter how much I want that back, even though I could still forget everything that has happened and settle comfortably in marriage with you, I know it is no longer possible.  It would be so easy to create distance and barricade myself from my feelings for you,but that’s not what I want.  I love you too much for that.  I will always love you.  So now I want build something new.  I want ‘us’ being together not to have to mean ‘husband, wife, married’ together because that is not the reality anymore.  I want ‘us’ being together to be’deep friendship, strong partnership, happiness that we are in each other’s lives, supportive, fun’.  Even though we can’t see what the future holds beyond that, that unknown path will be so much easier to travel if we are strong and comfortable in our new ‘together’”

And I see now that he is writing of the same thing that that list of instructions write about; letting something beautiful turn into something else that is beautiful.  In the deepest part of my heart I know that this is ultimately possible, because the bond that S. and I share goes so far beyond sexual connection.  I know we can be friends.  I know we can raise our children together.  I know we can find a new equilibrium for our relationship that will still be good and strong and vital.  But we won’t be us – and I don’t know how to deal with that.

I miss what was, and what can never be again.   I sit here and miss it until I feel my heart breaking into pieces for the millionth time this week.  I miss it as I push back the tears that just threatened to fall again, but that I just cannot seem to release.  I miss it as I go through my day feeling like I have completely lost my center.  I miss it when I feel like I have nowhere to turn for that ultimate comfort that always came from him.

Who am I, if not a part of ‘us’?  That might just be the most difficult question of all.

Addendum:

And it happens again, a couple of hours and just a few pages later.  I read:

“…find somebody new to love someday.  Take the time you need to heal, but don’t forget to eventually share your heart with someone.  Don’t make your life a monument to your past”.

And once again, tears start to spill as soon as my heart feels the words “find somebody new to love someday”.  Only three or four tears this time, and a few gasping deep breaths to find composure, but enough for me to fully understand just how close my emotions are to the surface.  They are just simmering there, bubbling away, waiting for someone or something to crack this ridiculous armor of mine enough that they might find release.

Find someone new to love?  How on earth is that possible?  Finding someone new to love means leaving this love behind.  It means releasing him to find his own new love.  It means starting over, from scratch – with a battle-scared heart and a soul weary with recent experience. 

I try to imagine her – this faceless, nameless person who could someday be my love.  I try to imagine me – healed and whole and owning myself on a level that would allow me to offer myself to someone the way you have to in order to truly find love.   I try to imagine myself trusting and believing again.  I know that it is going to take some serious, serious time before I am anywhere near ready for that.  I know that I need to walk alone for a while, find all the pieces of myself and take the time to learn how they all go together. 

Now I just need to reach deep in myself and find the strength and courage to do it.

______________________________________________________________________
*I am still working through not because it isn’t excellent, but because I have to stop every five minutes to write down something particularly wise in the little pink book that goes everywhere with me, or to meditate on a passage that seems to speak to me on a deeper level.  This is one of those books that came to me at the exact time I needed it, and I am savoring every last line.

“Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay.”

This was a part of our marriage vows, and the words I had engraved on S’s wedding band.  We said these words in unison, gazing straight into each others eyes, voices catching with emotion.  If you could have seen us on that day, you would have seen two people oh-so-young and full of love that we were almost bursting with it.  Full of hope and dreams of the future; flying high on pure love and gratitude to the universe for bringing us together.

Last night I took off my rings: Engagement ring, accepted through tears of joy over nine years ago.  Wedding ring, placed on my finger on a magical day in the summer of 1999 by a man who loved me more than life.  Anniversary band, given after five years of marriage while I sat on the couch with a horrid head cold moaning about how my illness ruined our plans to celebrate.

Eight years of marriage.  Almost eleven years as a couple.  A million memories of our life together.  The symbolic representation of all that love and commitment now carefully placed in the dark corner of a sock drawer.

Is there any wonder I am so deeply sad today?

S. removed his ring over a week ago.  I’ve taken my rings off briefly several times since this began journey began  – when I was out and wanted to escape my life for a while or when I was with someone and wearing the rings was a reminder of everything I was doing wrong -  but I’ve always put them back on.  Every single time, the guilt that made me place them back on my finger was a mirror image of the guilt that made me take them off in the first place.

It has been increasingly difficult for me to wear them recently.  They have felt heavy and foreign on my finger.  A reminder that I was a hypocrite, a cheater, a woman who betrayed every promise she made when those rings were accepted.   They used to be a part of me, something I wasn’t even conscious of most of the time.  Lately I have been aware of them almost every minute of the day – sometimes just with a sense of discomfort, other times with the feeling that they were burning a brand into my fingers, sometimes with a overwhelming sense of panic and fear, and always with such a depth of sadness that I lack the ability to reduce it to mere words.

But yet, there was a comfort that came from them too, and a reluctance to remove them for long.   This reluctance was born both from a desire to minimize the pain I caused (am causing) to my husband, and a reluctance on my part to commit to the next step in this journey.   An unwillingness to admit what this step really means.  I can choose to put those rings back on at any point, but I cannot take away the feelings inside me that caused me to remove them in the first place.   Both of the choices – the choice to take the rings off and the choice to put them back on – feel equally weighted and equally wrong.  One choice wrong because of what is, and one choice wrong because of what was supposed to be.

Last night, when I took them off, it was actually just a random moment.  When I started to remove them I wasn’t consciously aware of the decision I was making, but by the time I had twisted the final ring from my finger I knew.  I slipped them into my purse, and as they left my hand I felt the finality of the moment.  I knew that I couldn’t put them back on.  I knew that they were a symbol of something that I had already irrevocably damaged, a symbol of someone I could no longer claim to be.

That moment represented the first time I truly admitted to myself that there is no going back to what was.  I can’t go back and recapture what our marriage used to be.  I cannot go back and be the person I always thought I was.  There is no way to turn back the clock, to undo what has been done, to un-say what has been said.  And even if there was, I don’t think that I could make the choice to do it.  Not now, not after everything that has happened, not after all I have experienced and learned about myself.  No matter how much my heart is breaking into countless tiny pieces in this moment, I have to step solidly into this space – as solidly as I can when I feel like crumpling to the ground with every step I take.

I cannot go backwards into the comforting familiarity of the past and I cannot remain stagnant in the present.  It is the only authentic choice – but it is a choice that carries overwhelming heartache as its near constant companion.

This is where I am.  This is who I am.  This is not going to change.  This is reality, and this reality does cannot mesh with the vows I took eight years ago.   I fervently wish there was some way it could – I wish that right now with an ache in my heart, a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes – because I have no idea where to go from here.  I have no idea what to do next.  I thought I knew what my life would be, and now I don’t feel like I know anything at all.  I am frightened beyond all level of previously experienced fear.  I miss my husband.  I miss my soul mate.  I miss my best friend.  I miss my life.

I have never felt so alone.

And so here I sit today, on an otherwise ordinary day that is not really ordinary in the least.  As I type this post I am aware of the emptiness of my ring finger, just as aware of the absence of my rings as I have recently been aware of their presence.  It is almost as if the lack of their weight on my finger has carries a weight of its own. 

On random moments throughout the day, I feel their phantom presence, like the ghost of marriage past.  And I remember how my anniversary band always slid around because it was too big and we never got around to having it sized, how my diamond engagement ring always caught on my the edge of my pockets, how my wedding band had worn so unevenly thin in the back that I sometimes wondered if it would one day crack into pieces.  If I touch the spot where they used to be, I feel a ridge of smooth skin where they have left their imprint on my finger, and I wonder, how long it will take before that too is gone?  And what of their imprint on my heart?  Universe willing; I think I’d like to keep that.

Mostly I sit here and wonder how on earth I got to this point, and how on earth I manage to go on from here.

A few weeks ago, my friend J and I took our kids to a local LGBT Festival – kind of a mini-pride day downtown. Being kids, they managed to pick up oodles of tattoos, beads and other rainbow paraphernalia. Yes, my daughter went to school for a week covered in big ‘ole rainbow pride tattoos – there really are a million different levels of coming out!

Anyway, one of the things they picked up was a pride flag window cling-thingy. Last night we were in the girl’s room, and they girls were playing with it. I noticed hubby looking at it, and asked if he minded them having it. His reply?

“If I’m proud of you, how could I possibly mind?”

Again, impossible not to love him.